Texas Bluejay Summer

Here it is - Texas Bluejay Summer!  The bluejays,. courtesy of D., survived the washing machine well, and  the 'heat wave' quilting came out nicely.  Overall, I am pleased with it - a lot more pleased than I am with the ACTUAL summer here!  Hot hot hot!  But the bluejays are still outside in the trees yelling at us for not putting out more peanuts, and everywhere there is green.  I know Texas isn't really well known for green, but we have our fair share.  Sometimes.  In that vague period we call spring.  I will probably do a spring version of this quilt someday, but I do want to do an autumn version first.  So, it's off to think about what says Texas in autumn to me.   Well, after a few updates on other things!  I am also considering doing a tutorial on my little trees.  They are certainly not difficult, but people seem to like them!  So there's that to consider, as well as what makes a Texas autumn...  I will say that this quilt fought me all the way - it didn't want to be quilted, the marks didn't want to stay, and then they didn't want to go away... and one of the trees tried to escape in the wash.  Overall, I am content, though, now that the battles with it are over!

But no resting on my laurels (or my bluejays!).  We're gearing up for this Saturday's quilting basics class.  I've got syllabus, handouts, and my ever-growing list of things to have prepped.  Two quilts in progress are waiting on me, D. has got two she's working on now, oh, and the little sample I am working on.  I started a miniature Disappearing 9 Patch last night.  The entire thing should measure out to about 6" x 8" and have 12 blocks total.  I should be able to get most of it done tonight - I cut out all the strips and got the layout down like I want it.  More pics on that one tonight, hopefully!

I'm not very good about taking pictures, I know... it's a hurdle I have to overcome.  I don't like taking pictures all that much, and I certainly don't like pictures of me!  So that's my next big non-quilting project - get better at pictures.  Wish me luck!

It's Tuesday Already??

Wow!  The weekend FLEW past!  Yesterday was a 12 hour day at the day job, so yikes... here it is Tuesday already....

I WILL have pics up tonight of Texas Bluejay Summer (which has everything except the blue jays so far).  I have decided I will stipple this one... mostly because it reminds me of heat waves rising off the ground, which is ENTIRELY appropriate for Texas in the summer!  

We went estate sale-ing this weekend and I picked up something that reminded me of Texas summers in a whole different way.  To me, Texas summers have a definite smell - something of dried and dead grass, and something else that I've never been able to identify.  Maybe heat.  :)  But I picked up some oil lamps that smelled like Texas in the summer to me.  I had to have them.  Now I just have to go get oil and wicks and I am in business!  (There were 12 of them, and I got them and a LOT of books for $15.  This is why I love estate sales). 

This weekend also looks good for estate sales!  (But I promise I will try to sew and quilt more!)

We DID get Frank (the mid-arm - does that make him a Middie?) set up this weekend.  A few bobbles and thread adjustments, and we are up and running.  Here's D, helping with the threading after I stomped off in a huff.  (Well, not really, since I am there taking pictures, but at first it was frustrating).  The piece on Frank in the picture is a test piece - an old pre-printed length we got at.... big surprise... an estate sale. 

I got in plenty of practice this weekend, and there will be more practice this week.  I want to get my first quilt done on Frank.  Number one on the list is Isaac's Storm.  I marked my pattern Sunday, so it will be ready when I think I am.  :)  Which should be this week, if I take it easy when I start sewing.

I am excited.  Which means I will have to be careful! 

Anvil #1

I was gifted this little leatherworker's anvil some time ago.  It seems an appropriate thing to put in the quilt forge. 

Isn't it cute?  I hope to have more anvils out there soon.... if anyone knows where I can get a full-sized one to put in the corner and drape a quilt and hammer over, I'd love to know!

In the meantime, I am working on a pincushion shaped like an anvil.  I think I know how to do it.  Now it's just a matter of giving it a try!

Oh, and I finally got all the skulls cut out for Sugar Skull.  I guess that means this weekend I should start laying them out and sewing them back together again! 

I also was be-thumped by another quilt idea: since all of my grandparents' generation is now gone, I spent some time remembering what it was like at their homes over the years.  Combine that with a nice toasty summer, and lo and behold, another quilt. 

My grandparents moved a lot - fixing up houses, selling them for a profit, buying another one, repeat.... but they had two houses that I remember very well.  Both were in the country, with large pieces of land.  On one piece of land my grandfather and father built the house.  It's still there, by the way.  But the other thing the houses had in common, other than their rural nature, was the type of trees.  They both had pine trees.  My grandparents lived sort of on the edge of the Big Piney, in East Texas.  Whenever we would go visit them, there were certain things that always seemed to hold true: the sound of the hot summer wind in the pine trees, the sound of cicadas, and the sound of blue jays.

That is summer in Texas to me: pine trees, cicadas, and blue jays.  Where I live now doesn't have pine trees, but it has the other two.  So there's another quilt building in my mind; I have a rough sketch, and by Monday should have more than that!

Thursday on the Anvil

Yesterday I promised pictures, so here they are!

This is Isaac's Storm - so named after the Galveston, TX hurricane of 1900 that killed approximately 10,000 people.  Yes.  10,000.  It's a matter of chaos, really... no one had ever encountered a hurricane quite like that one, and it was considered to be just another storm.  Obviously, it was not.

The title of the quilt comes from the book of the same name about the hurricane.  It's a good read, if disturbing, and I highly recommend it. 

There will be a pattern of this one for sale - along with another colorway or three....  :)  We're getting all the pesky details finalized right now.

Here is Texas Daycare.  Moo!  A little longhorn in his field, keeping company with the tree and the prickly pear.  To me, this is a good part of Texas, despite the fact that I grew up in San Antonio, where the nearest longhorns were a ways north in the Hill Country.  His pattern, too, is almost complete. 

Texas Daycare will be the first in the Texas series of quilts.  Mind, none of them are flag-waving, look-it's-the-Alamo, God-bless-Texas kinds of quilts.  They are each an aspect of Texas, a special small slice that covers PART of the Lone Star State.

Sugar Skulls is going to be second in that series, and it's to that end that I am working so hard to get all the skulls cut out and pieced back together. 




So there's the newest designs on the anvil.  For a Thursday update, not too shabby!

Yardage and Pincushions

I'm working on several quilts at once, of course: Texas Daycare, Isaac's Storm (both have completed tops and just need quilting and binding), Boston Molasses Flood (in process of quilting), Crazy Diamonds (now with 16 squares done), and the newest one: Sugar Skulls.

Sugar Skulls is a tesselated pattern I am working on: it requires 400 skulls cut out of black, white, cream, and novelty skull fabrics.  It's to be a king-sized quilt, and buy does the yardage show that!  Planning out the yardage on something like this is by FAR my least favorite part of the whole quilting process.  If I am figuring correctly, I need about 12 yards of material.  I understand that I am making a king-sized quilt, but still.... that's a decent amount of material!  (Fortunately, we have that much I can use for this quilt.  I MIGHT supplement with a few fat quarters, just to add a little more variety, but we'll see).  At any rate, the cutting process is fairly slow, but I'll get it done.  One the piecing is done, I will applique a few details, and so on....

In the meantime, Crazy Diamonds is creeping along.  We did more cutting than anything last night, and picture taking of quilt tops.  It's a shame I forgot to load them on the computer so I could post them!  (Tonight, I promise!) 

D. has two quilt tops finished as well, and might be able to start quilting one of them tonight.  There are always chores to do and things that have to take precendence.  But it's a stitch in the ditch quilting job, so it shouldn't take too long. 

We're going to build a new design board tonight, which calls for a trip to the local ReStore (and Home Depot if we can't find what we're looking for at ReStore).  Once we get it made, we'll be able to have several quilts up on the board at once, instead of taking turns!  We are both looking forward to it. 

There are a couple of estate sales we'll hit this weekend, too - a couple that say they have craft supplies and fabric.  There are usually a few pieces that we can use in quilts, and we can find interesting fabrics!  We're also getting prepped for a class in the quilt forge: a basic quilting class.

 Well, back to work on yardage calculations!

Hammering Out the Kinks

Crazy diamonds from the stash!  Colorful - no measuring!

Started two new quilts this week.  One won't be any sort of problem - it's as much a way to relax from my own designs (particularly when those designs fight back!)  It's a Crazy Diamonds quilt - simple and easy.  No measuring required once I got the base squares cut out.  100 muslin 12.5" squares.  Yay for stash of muslin!

Only 96 more to go!  It's a great way of using up the smaller scraps in our scrap bin.  We have so many scraps, I needed a way to clear some out.  Now I can make smaller scraps (in some cases).  For those really small pieces, I shred them and stick them in a mesh bag outside for the birds to make nests from.  I can only assume that we have some of the most colorful bird's nests in the area, based on the fabrics that go in that bag!

The other quilt I started is the one that's fighting back.  I shouldn't be surprised (and I'm not.  Not really).  It's an applique quilt - part of a series of Texas-themed quilts I've got planned.  At any rate, it SHOULD have been simple.  Except that it's applique, and my fusible stuff didn't want to fuse, and pieces fell everywhere... which is why I started on the Crazy Diamonds.  But.  I figure a picture of the quilt in progress - or at least a small section of it - is nevertheless called for.  So here it is.

Moo?

This one is an unfinished applique - he still needs horns and his tail, and a little detail work.  Then he will need details to the field he stands in.  The quilt itself is to be called "Texas Daycare" (as a working title).  This little guy will be a longhorn baby hanging out in a field in Texas with prickly pear and mesquite, just like a lot of the cattle in the area I was born in.  (Yup, born and raised in Texas, just south of the Hill Country).  He's the first in a very diverse series of Texas-themed quilts.  None of them will be Texas flags, and none of them (at this time) are going to scream Texas, but to me, it's Texas that links them all together.  They are sights and scenes from the Texas that I know. 

 So, today I'll go back into the quilt forge and start working on this guy again, try to hammer out the kinks in the applique process.  There will be more pictures to follow!  I hope everyone had a fabulous Fourth of July, and came through it healthy and ready to head back into work.  (Yeah, right).  If I am really motivated, there might actually be pictures of the outside of the quilt forge: see the mesh bag for the birds, the bird baths, the bird feeders....  And maybe some of the stained glass-type designs we're working on for the quilt forge windows...  just to take some of the glare out of the evening sun! 

As ever, busily!

Shay